[This column appears in the May/June 2022 issue of Boston Spirit magazine. Subscribe for free today.]
We are at a pivotal time in our movement for LGBTQ rights.
I am inspired and humbled to have joined GLAD as Chief Legal Strategist at this moment, following nearly 20 years of leading diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in law school admissions and student affairs.
I grew up Black and gay in a small North Carolina town in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, at a time when it was a felony to be gay in my state. Just as a police sting targeting gay men at Boston Public Library led to GLAD’s founding in 1978, similar stings in Charlotte, North Carolina, propelled my dream to attend law school.
The past decades have seen victories we couldn’t have imagined when I began my legal career.
It is no longer a felony anywhere in the country to be gay. We have the freedom to marry if we choose to. LGBTQ youth have more support to learn who they are and be themselves. We have laws protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in 22 states—we still have a long way to go. And we saw a monumental Supreme Court ruling just two years ago confirming that LGBTQ workers are protected from discrimination by federal law.
But over the past two years, we have seen a wave of anti-LGBTQ bills across the country—most of them targeting transgender kids.
These include school censorship efforts like the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law in Florida and a New Hampshire law GLAD is challenging in federal court that denies students the chance to learn accurate information about American history or even talk about race, disability, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation at school.
They include chilling efforts in Texas and other states to remove trans children from the homes of their supportive parents and deny those kids access to lifesaving health care. GLAD is involved in national strategic discussions about stopping these cruel bans.
They include attempts to ban transgender girls from playing school sports with their friends—bills we defeated in Maine and New Hampshire last year and then saw introduced in Rhode Island this year.
We successfully stopped two particularly alarming bills in New Hampshire this session: one that would have repealed the state’s ban on conversion therapy and one that aimed not only to bar transgender students from sports but to allow harassment of transgender people in public restrooms.
If that last one sounds familiar, it’s because it’s just a new form of the same kind of fearmongering bill we’ve seen attempted many times before, including in my home state of North Carolina. I’m sure you recall the very public fight over HB2.
And in fact, GLAD is in federal court in Tennessee right now, challenging a law that forces businesses to post a “warning sign” on restroom doors if they treat transgender employees and customers equally.
Every day, we hear about a new harmful bill popping up somewhere. It can feel overwhelming—but we remain determined to turn the tide against this anti-LGBTQ legislative wave.
Because here’s the truth—83 percent of people across the country support legal rights for the LGBTQ community. That happened because all of us show up every day to say this is a country where everyone should be able to be who they are and be treated fairly.
There is genuine harm being done by these bills, often to incredibly vulnerable young people. But we can’t ever forget the power we have to make positive change.
Even as we fight these attacks, GLAD continues our work to advance justice for our community.
That work includes ensuring our families have the legal security we need by passing laws like the Massachusetts Parentage Act.
It means winning the right for LGBTQ people to age with dignity, as in our case on behalf of Marie King, who was turned away from a Maine assisted living facility because she is transgender.
It means removing barriers so that everyone who needs it can access PrEP, including in rural communities and communities of color where it is often out of reach.
It means dismantling the systemic racism and lack of LGBTQ support in our child welfare systems, stopping the brutality of our prison system and disrupting the school to juvenile justice to prison pipeline.
And it means ensuring that every LGBTQ person in this country, no matter where they live, is protected from discrimination in every area of life.
Yes, we are in a challenging moment. But we’ve seen challenging moments before. I saw and experienced those challenges growing up in the South, just as many of you have here in New England.
And what I know is that we will persevere and ultimately win.
More: glad.org
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